Purrls

Sunday, June 06, 2010

Bargain!

So we needed new sheets. I have a serious problem buying sheets--they pill, they wear thin, the elastic lets go, etc. I never want to buy expensive ones because I'm afraid that they will do the same thing and I will have just wasted MORE money.

I decided to learn about buying sheets. Apparently Egyptian cotton is queen. And some cheaper sheets that claim high thread counts are actually 2 ply threads, split (and thus weakened) and are not even as good as the "actual" thread count they are. See, thread counts are easy to remember and thus easy to sell. So they use lower quality cotton and up the thread count. Because most people just look at the thread count and not the actual contents.

Armed with this information, I decided to do my usual thing---throw money at it. I figured I'd go to Macy's and buy awesome (expensive) sheets and they would be wonderful. I happened to be spending the day with my buddy LJ yesterday and she suggested Filene's Basement, for those department store names at half the price.

What fun! I had budgeted about $75-100 for new sheets. I found 500 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets that felt delicious soft and were a lovely turquoise color for only $50. The little tag said "compare at $190" which I don't know that I believe, however these were probably at least $100 in their department store incarnation. And then on the clearance rack I found delightfully buttery soft chocolate brown sheets by Nautica.....marked down to $26. $26 will hardly even buy you a cheap set of queen sheets, and we're talking REALLY cheap. I'm sure I spent more on Maggie's twin sheets and they are pretty basic quality.

The $26 sheets had a few marks on them--like the sewing machine dripped a little oil on the seams. Tiny marks. At first I put them back, but after a trip to the bathroom I was still thinking about how soft and delicious they were.....and so I decided for $26 I would try to get the spots out, and even if I couldn't, they weren't anything gross and heck, sheets get spots on them anyway, so for delicious buttery softness and an awesome chocolate color...I would take the risk.

They're in the wash right now and just handling them to put them in the wash was lovely. I decided that for a discount of like, $100 I was willing to deal with a couple of little spots :-)

I wasn't sure if I violated the rule of "if something's on sale, that doesn't mean you should buy two" but really, I hear you're supposed to have THREE sets of sheets for each bed. We have that for Maggie's bed, but not ours. We actually have one set with pills, and one set with holes along the elastic, and that's it. Shameful! So I figured, since I budgeted about $100 for one set of sheets (figuring I'd save up for a second set) $82 for TWO sets of sheets was fair.